"This is much more modern," Brian Kendrick said. "All different kinds of styles. A lot of improvisation. At any point, anyone can get up and take a solo."

Just for fun - and with no disrespect intended - Brian Kendrick's Big Band is referred to playfully as "not your grandfather's big band."

"Not to insult anyone's grandfather," said Kendrick, a drummer and Delta College jazz instructor who admires ("which is fantastic") World War II-era big-band and jazz pioneers. "But this is more modern. More connected to anyone who likes jazz and progressive music."

Kendrick's 18-member group, filling a live-jazz void in Stockton, energizes and improvises for a third time Monday night at Take 5 Jazz at the Brew.

Tunes by Count Basie and Duke Ellington are on the set list. So are selections by Pat Metheny, Bob Curnow, James Miley and John Clayton along with arrangements by Mazzaferro and other band members.

"This is actually pretty easy," said Kendrick, 52, who also plays in two other regular Take 5 Jazz at the Brew groups. "All I had to do was call guys up and say, 'Let's do it.' Just send out email. 'Are you interested?' Everybody was. Nobody turned us down."

Now, Brubeck Institute Jazz Quintet members from University of the Pacific lead Take 5 jam sessions on Tuesdays. The quintet and groups led by institute director Simon Rowe (piano) and Pacific's Patrick Langham (saxophone) - with Kendrick on drums - alternate Thursday shows.

Kendrick's Big Band, with Tom Kelley, a Brubeck Institute Jazz Quintet saxophone player included, plays the last Monday of each month.

Kendrick and Mazzaferro have seen this sort of thing before.

Kendrick, a native of Newport News, Va., who earned two music degrees from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, was getting a master's degree and teaching at Syracuse University when he discovered Syracuse Suds.

A brew pub that was "very similar, the same kind of vibe" as Take 5, it "pulled the best players from the area." He and his Salt City Jazz Collective were regulars.

He also likens Take 5 - in capacity and ambience - to New York City's 76-year-old Village Vanguard.

A Sacramento native and Pacific graduate, Mazzaferro, 28, studied jazz at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, discovering "quite a scene there. All the clubs all the time spreading up," creating a "unifying spirit that let a lot of musicians create."

He also inhabits Sacramento's downtown Naked Lounge monthly with his Joe Mazzaferro Quintet. In 2010, he helped Langham, an associate professor and director of jazz studies at Pacific, found the Sacramento Jazz Orchestra.

Rowe and Langham's models for Take 5 were clubs in Fargo-Moorhead, Minn., and Knoxville.

Kendrick's big-band instincts are natural.

His dad, Robert, a career-long member of the U.S. Army, was a "big, big, big-band" fan and trumpet player. Mom Polly was a "music lover," too.

Kendrick, "exposed early on" (age 10) to drumming, was part of an "amazing music program" in Seguin, Texas: "Hearing the best big bands in the world was just thrilling. I loved music. It just kind of caught hold."

That's what he's hoping for with his big band, even when squeezed into the 60-capacity Take 5.

"It's like one of those human Christmas trees," Kendrick said. "It's pretty compact, really. It's great. Really raucous. But nobody's claimed it's too loud. There's a very dynamic band learning to play in the room. Whenever people come down, it's gonna be good. Not sub-par."

It also will be progressively big band.

"My guess is there's a lot of misconception with the old-timey, Dixieland-ish kind of thing or smooth jazz," Mazzaferro said. "Not being exactly sure what to expect. A lot of things that are kind of old, some people don't want to have anything to do with it.

"If I say we're swingin' and we're having fun, it really just means we're groovin' in our own way. We're not doing it for money. We're doing it because we actually have fun playing this music. That's how we approach it."